In an interview with DigiTimes, ASUS general manager of motherboard business Joe Hsieh commented on reports of Intel abandoning CPU sockets in favor of processors being hardwired to motherboards in BGA packages. Hsieh said that the issue will not be as bad as people think and Intel could find a strategy that allows both soldered and socketed processors to be sold, which is much like today, except that hardwired processors are limited to notebooks (Core i3 and i5 processors in the BGA1224 package) and low-end Atom-driven desktop motherboards.

What lends Hsieh's statement weight, apart from the fact that he leads the biggest PC motherboard design team, is that Intel recently denied those reports, saying it would provide socketed CPUs for "the foreseeable future." Last month, Japanese publication PC Watch, credited for generally accurate tech predictions based on information at hand, reported that following its 22 nm Core "Haswell" CPU family, Intel could transform its entry-, mainstream-, and performance-segment client CPUs to hardwired BGA packages, probably leaving socketed CPUs only to HEDT (high-end desktop) and enterprise Xeon processor lines. Other PC motherboard vendors DigiTimes spoke with echoed ASUS' opinion, they don't believe Intel could "suddenly" completely change the way processors are sold to consumers.

There is only one thing good about soldered CPU's. You could theoretically pump much higher amps and higher wattages without setting pins on fire.

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Yup, less electrical resistance but also better thermal contact with the motherboard. The CPU will more easily be able to dissipate heat into the motherboard, which could be good and bad. It depends on the motherboard manufacturer. It certainly could lower temps for the CPU. It also opens the possibility of converting the laptop market to SoC by moving a number of components in the PCH to the CPU. It could also reduce motherboard sizes which could give you more room for battery and use less power at the same time (if they take the SoC route).

I've been saying that cooling other side of the chip is also a smart thing to do. After all, CPU heats up both sides, not just the one to the cooler side but also to the mobo side. So making the mobo as heat conductive as posisble in the back and giving it option to stick a thermal pad on it and a thin but rather large heatsink. I'm sure that would help as well.

Or in my case with Lian Li case, i'd want to connect back of the mobo to the entire aluminium side panel. It would make one giant heatsink. Along with internal CPU cooler.

Yes...there is no reason to fear or fight the future...sides oneday.......cue mystical music...there will exist a tablet that have the power of a desk top ....we will alll have one....

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Thats what I'm thinking, in the future our computers will be housed in tablets or even better smart phones. When you want to do work, or play games, you simply plug your smartphone into your desktop monitor. One device, that can be used at home, at work, or mobile.

The lower and middle end will be carefully controlled to bring down power as a whole package working together, just like Intel did with ultra-book standards maybe. I don`t see why Intel needs to do that on the desktop though, its not required whatsoever. It only makes sense on the mobile side or small NUC like form factor stuff.

Or maybe intel is having problems reducing power! especially on the IGP front. If we look at the mobile IGP (AMD & Intel), we see that AMD needs a fraction of the power that Intel needs for their IGP, the opposite can be said for Intel on the CPU vs AMD but still the CPU difference isn't as big as is on the IGP even then it still don`t make sense why they need to do that.

It could be that Intel wants to cut out as many middle men as possible to gain profits as the markets decline, desperate times needs desperate measures maybe Yup, this last one kinda makes more sense

Heh. I remember those, but I doubt that they'll do that again. The are cooling considerations as well as the added circuit length by putting a CPU "card" into the motherboard. Also you're moving the CPU further away from the VRMs, which would be a step in the wrong direction imho.

I suspect what this really means is that mobile chips and low-profile platforms will be soldered to the board, where mainstream and enthusiast markets will retain some form of socket to allow interchangeability.

I would have to say the biggest benefit to BGA chips would be to reduce the overall height of components on the motherboard for mobile/low-profile devices to allow for lighter and thinner devices.